Monday, January 22, 2007

spam, ddos, scanning worms etc - all these are just constant background in today's internet - in fact, looking at the inards of a biological system you see the same (there are more bacteria in you than there are people in the world - so the end point of the evolution of the internet will probably be similar - as with frank zappa, the most common substance in the universe isn't hydrogen, its human stupidity - the most common content on the internet wont be "real" - it will be "junk".

meanwhile, lawyers: an existence proof that evolution is not about optimisation.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Just re-reading Snow Crash for the umpteenth time, and marvelling at various predictionsneal stephenson made in what was the pre-web age (the book was published i think in1992, which means he was writing it in the late 80s or 1991 latest, which is a year beforemosaic and cern httpd first jiut the streets).

some of the thignshe predicts -1/ the info-apocalypse hypercard the cic librarian giveshiro isa) a version of the web + google, but more specificallyb) a perfect detailed description of google earth

2/ the description of L Bob Rife's cable tv monopolyand some of the details about comparing itto the his scorn of the break up of AT&T(see cingular story)presagesa) today's net neutrality arguments, but alsob) the near monopoly sky tv is trying to achieve by moving into a triple play to own cellular and in its turn to take over broadband

3/ everyone of course knows about the metaverse & the street buteven on the playstation 3 or xbox 360 we still don't quite have anythingfor the public yet that good

4/ also the idea of VLBI (very long baseline interferometer) is clearly described and explaiend why there are ulterior motives for it (not least to justify ring aroudn the world fiber, when actually a space based interferometer for radio astronomy would be cheaper and MUCH bigger/better resolution)

5/ and also there's a lovely description of somethign i experienced when one of my kids turned about 5 - the fact that the instructions/design of the avergage VCR leave no imprint/memory on the modern (adult/educated) Mind - when she was 4 she could programme the VCR - once she got to the point of thinking about it, it made no sense and she stopped being able to use it

the En of Enki rocks...

there are numerous other predictions (collapse of nation state and immigrationchaos) which are less precise partly because they are intended as satirerather than predictions, but are scarily close to being likely...

a cool book and it would make a very very cool film...who to cast as Hiro?lots of possibilities!

Just re-reading Snow Crash for the umpteenth time, and marvelling at various predictionsneal stephenson made in what was the pre-web age (the book was published i think in1992, which means he was writing it in the late 80s or 1991 latest, which is a year beforemosaic and cern httpd first jiut the streets).

some of the thignshe predicts -1/ the info-apocalypse hypercard the cic librarian giveshiro isa) a version of the web + google, but more specificallyb) a perfect detailed description of google earth

2/ the description of L Bob Rife's cable tv monopolyand some of the details about comparing itto the his scorn of the break up of AT&T(see cingular story)presagesa) today's net neutrality arguments, but alsob) the near monopoly sky tv is trying to achieve by moving into a triple play to own cellular and in its turn to take over broadband

3/ everyone of course knows about the metaverse & the street buteven on the playstation 3 or xbox 360 we still don't quite have anythingfor the public yet that good

there are numerous other predictions (collapse of nation state and immigrationchaos) which are less precise partly because they are intended as satirerather than predictions, but are scarily close to being likely...

a cool book and it would make a very very cool film...who to cast as Hiro?lots of possibilities!